Pharma Veterans

World Drug Report 2023 – Part 1 – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #885 Dear Colleagues!  This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #885 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans  aims to share knowledge and wisdom from Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on  WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Credit: Alesia Kozik Credit: MART Production Credit: Zarina Khalilova We are now talking about DRUGS, the illicit compounds of various types and abused medicines.  This is the latest information from UNODC - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. They have published World Drug Report 2023 (link at the end) which shows where the world is vis-à-vis drugs and crime; illicit drugs or abused medicines are a crime by itself and leads to more crimes. This report such important information that it should be shared in detail and shared publicly to raise awareness. I sh...

Global Drug Pricing Practices and Pakistan – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #865 Dear Colleagues!  This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #865 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans aims to share knowledge and wisdom from Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on  WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Credit: CDC Credit: Los Mortes Crew Credit: MART Production This blogpost partakes from an excellent article by ZUD Babar, published in Journal of Pharmaceutical Policy and Practice. Link at the end. The medicines pricing policies of country should cover the following objectives. a. To ensure access to effective, safe, and quality assured affordable medicines for all, b. To establish fair medicines pricing mechanisms that can improve access, c. To support the pharmaceutical industry. It is also important to understand the global medicines pricing setup....

Controversies – Drug Pricing in Pakistan – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #863 Dear Colleagues!  This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #863 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans aims to share knowledge and wisdom from Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on  WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Credit: Nataliya Viatkevich Credit: Polina Tankilevitch Credit: Anna Shvets Drug Pricing Policy 2018, which is the most recent and current policy for regulating drug prices, stipulated that the pharma companies would be able to increase prices every year automatically, based on inflation data – CPI, issued by the government and as provided in the policy. However, in early 2019, DRAP amended the policy unilaterally to take back its control over drug pricing. This was done after public outcry over price increases and ongoing debate about affordable healthcare. Kabeer...

Medicines Pricing in Pakistan - History – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #862 Dear Colleagues!  This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #862 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans aims to share knowledge and wisdom from Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on  WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Credit: JESHOOTS Credit: Maxim Goncharenok Credit: Tara Winstead Human welfare directly relates to health. There is a positive relationship between a population’s health and economic development of a country. An important component of public health is access to quality medicines, as it accounts for a significant portion of health expenditure. For the same reason, Pakistan is among those countries where drug prices are fixed and regulated by the government. There are other reasons for this exercise also, more important of which is the political mileage that the gover...

Drug Prices Row – Important Points – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #831 Dear Colleagues!  This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #831 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans aims to share knowledge and wisdom from Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on  WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Photo Credit: Karolina Grabowska Photo Credit: Anna Shvets Photo Credit: Polina Tankilevitch Drug Prices have been a cause for face-off between Pakistan Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association (PPMA) and Drug Regulatory Authority Pakistan (DRAP) for quite some time. PPMA members continued to ask for price increase on the basis of continuous rise in the cost of inputs, partly due to rupee devaluation and partly due to increased cost of utilities, labor etc. DRAP and its predecessor Ministry of Health (MoH) sometimes agreed and sometimes did not. Across the board increase...

State of Healthcare in Pakistan – Part 8 – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #791 Dear Colleagues!  This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #791 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans welcome sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on  WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Photo Credit: Karolina Grabowska Photo Credit: Alex Green Photo Credit: cottonbro studio Healthcare stands on three pillars: Healthcare related policies; Public and private health infrastructure; and availability of diagnostic and treatment tools, the last one also includes easy access to drugs. We shall review each of these in some detail to understand the entire healthcare landscape. The information is gathered from several sources, and references are given at the bottom. Drugs & Devices Infrastructure Access to Drugs Pakistan boasts a large pharmaceutical...

State of Healthcare in Pakistan – Part 1 – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #784 Dear Colleagues!  This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #784 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans welcome sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on  WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Photo Credit: Karolina Grabowska Photo Credit: Laura James Photo Credit: Anna Shvets Pakistan is the sixth most populous country in the world, with a population of over 220 million, a figure which is likely to increase after the current census gets done. We still prefer to call ourselves ‘a developing country, though we have fast degraded as an ‘underdeveloped’ state. Our economy has nosedived, our governance is at its worst ever, our politics is at it dirtiest, and our people, businesses, workers, officers, decision makers, law enforcers, and reformers are at t...